Mumbai: In a significant claim, Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley today said that Ishrat Jahan-who was killed in an alleged fake encounter in 2004 in Gujarat-was actually a suicide bomber of Lashkar-e-Taiba terror outfit. The disclosure is likely to ignite a fresh row around the controversial encounter.

Testifying via video-link from the US, Headley spilled the beans on the 19-year-old Mumbra girl and picked up her name when quizzed by Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam about a botched up operation mentioned to him (Headley) by LeT commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi.

Headley told the court that Lakhvi had mentioned to him about a botched-up operation conducted in India by another LeT operative Muzammil Butt where a female member of the terror outfit was killed.

Prodded by Nikam to elaborate on the operation and the members involved in it, Headley said, "(I was told) It was a shootout with police in which a (female) suicide bomber was killed".

To which the prosecutor prompted three names of which Headley picked up Jahan before telling the court that "there is a female wing in LeT and one Abu Aiman's mother headed it".

Four persons- Ishrat Jahan, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

The city crime branch had then said that those killed in the encounters were LeT terrorists and had landed in Gujarat to kill then Chief Minister Narendra Modi.